Demons on My Mind

originally posted to Twitter on September 8, 2021.

The liquid roils within its flask, fighting against the thick rubber stopper. Pink and purple and green glimmer on its surface, fleeting highlights against its deep reflective black.

It’s trying so hard to get out—but it doesn’t stand a chance. Spell-etched glass and a binding circle burned into your countertop make sure of that—even if it broke the stopper, it would be trapped.

So … it’s really not a big deal to don a pair of thick leather gloves and pull the stopper out, to tip the flask and pour it out. Everything will be fine.

The liquid slops down onto the table, sizzles and pulls back where it spreads too close to the binding circle. A dense sphere, entirely hidden by the goo, is the last thing to leave the flask—the creature’s core, the only part of it that’s really vulnerable.

If you had a taser, the core is what you’d want to target.

But you don’t have a taser.

All you’ve got is some scavenged spells and protective gear. Not exactly enough to manage a demon.

The liquid manifests an eye (not even that, really. A sketch of an eye, an emoji in purple and green) and peers around. Stares at you.

“Uh,” you say. “You’re a demon, right?”

The slime pulls itself together, bubbling up into a column. For a moment it spins in place—and then there’s a tiny figure standing there, less than a foot high. Its features—the exaggerated breasts, the cock fading into the goo of its legs, the tiny wings and curling horns—are elegantly limned in pink.

Its head is an oversized sphere, either its core or a perfect facsimile. At its front is a single purple eye, exactly the same as the one it had manifested before.

You shiver when you hear its voice—there’s something wrong with it, something about how it plays across your ears. “Close enough, mortal.”

“Right. So, uh … you have powers? You can change bodies?”

It laughs. “Into corpses. Do you want to unleash me on your enemies, mortal?”

“No, I mean … into better forms. Forms more like …” You gesture at it, try not to blush—if only it wasn’t so hard to just say what you want!

“Oh? Better forms? Wise of you to recognize that, mortal,” the demon says, preening. “And … yes. That is something I can do.”

“W-would you? What price do you want?”

“Just let me out. That’s all.”

“I … really?”

“Of course. Let me out, and I’ll give you a body more like mine. Something much better than what you have now.”

You reach forward, almost without thinking, and spill a cup of sand onto the table. The binding circle breaks with a faint chime as grains fill in its deep trenches—and the demon just sits there.

“Go on, mortal. Touch me.”

You obey.

Its body is cool and smooth, nothing like the hot stickiness you expected. Its form gives way under your hand, a wave of glossy black flowing up your arm, spreading itself over you …

It feels right.

It’s under your shirt, so you pull it off, enraptured, and watch the wave flow across your scrawny chest and slip under your pants and up your neck.

Even just this, without anything else … it’s so beautiful.

You can’t tell if tears fall from your eyes, because just as they might have started the goo reaches them and everything goes dark.

Your senses are empty, save a gentle coolness surrounding you; for a long moment you drift. Then—

“This will hurt, mortal.”

—everything burns. Your mind is fire and pain and you’re screaming and it’s hell and what have you agreed to what sort of mistake have you made—

Somewhere a clock strikes, the sound like a burst of cool water spreading across your body, and everything is fine.

The world comes back.

Vision and touch and hearing and scent, all those lovely senses—and they’re all so vivid! There’s something different about how you’re seeing and everything feels so good and you’ve fallen to the floor and the tiles feel so nice—

And now, mortal, you need to calm down. There’s still something left to do.

There’s something smooth in your hand, an orb? It squishes slightly when you squeeze it—and unholy fuck does squeezing it feel good, your entire body pulsing with pleasure in tandem with the demon enveloping you.

Ahh!—I didn’t mean that, mortal. Swallow it.

You can’t resist fondling the demon’s core as you raise it to your lips—and really, who could?

But the way it feels on your lips, the way your tongue feels against it, makes you regret taking so long. You can feel it everywhere, all across your new skin, deep in your bones—soft and slippery and wet and so, so good. As it pops into your mouth your back arches and your toes curl; as it pulls itself down your throat, slime swelling out of it to aid its passage, you fall to the floor in paroxysms of pleasure. The world shatters and fades, and your mind breaks with it; somewhere you can hear the demon’s voice raised in pleasure to match your own.

Afterward, when you recover, you will lose yourself in wonder at your new form—at how it flows beneath your hands, at how its patterns shift with your moods; you will lose yourself in it once again. You will learn what it is like to share your body and mind with a demon, to feel its thoughts against your own; and it will tell you some measure of what you will need to know so that both of you may survive existing together.

Afterward—a long, long time after—you will meet others of your new kind; and in the world’s splinters you see something of the life you might make with them.

But it’s not time for that, not yet.

It will be an eternity until it is—or no time at all, if you trust clocks.

Enough time to lose yourself entirely.

Or to realize who you were supposed to be all along.